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Wednesday, 3 April 2013

Face recognition

I met someone the other day who recognised me; he said we'd met a few years ago. I hadn't a clue who he was.

This happens to me a lot, and I've been thinking about it. I don't think it's because I'm famous, because I'm not. I've never been on Apprentice X-Brother. I think it's a deficiency in me.

I read that a few people can't recognise other people at all, and I don't have that problem, but I'm thinking that maybe there's a gradation here, whereby some people are a lot worse at facial recognition than others, and I'm at the end that's not much good.

4 comments:

Thoughts, You always speak lots of sense and everything you have said is true. But also don't peoples faces change? They weather, they get marked, they change. So you will not necessairly be able to make allowances for that, and especially not in an instant when you have to recall who they are. I bet if you walked past me at a train station, I wouldn't realise it was you!!

I have the same problem, I am terrible at recognising faces, especially if they change their hair in some way. I am sure there are a lot of people who would recognise Dr Solly, and not reciprocating that recognition is something that can be embarassing. I never expect anyone to recognise me, but maybe that is why I don't spend a lot more time trying to comit faces to memory.

I look forward to an "augmented reality" system, whereby my glasses photograph everyone I meet, and then use facial recognition software to tell me the name and other important details when we meet again.